


Golden

by Eidol



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-04
Updated: 2016-04-06
Packaged: 2018-05-31 04:52:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6456664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eidol/pseuds/Eidol
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The stories of the first humans are a mystery to most who call the underground home.<br/>While remnants may be found, they themselves have disappeared without a trace.<br/>However, there is one member, forgotten but never forgetful, who knows exactly what happened to them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Soul One

There had always been something about the color gold that had made him cringe. Despite its shining veneer, the promise of riches that his mind had been perhaps too young and naïve to fully comprehend, he had found it somehow disturbing. It had been the color of heroes in fairytales, the color of sunlight and the hair of beautiful princesses. But of course, he’d never heard these tales, never experienced the sun. And now he was stuck in a prison of gold within the larger prison of darkness that enveloped them all. He wasn’t upset about this. Quite the contrary actually – he felt nothing at all. This had come to be the norm for the once amiable and soft-hearted prince, one of the brightest and most beloved among monsters. Now he simply dwelt in the shadows, exerting his influence in myriad ways when he was bored, but otherwise simply waiting. Waiting for what seemed like eons in the deep, dark abysses of his home and mind. Waiting for what, he did not know.

The waiting seemed to come to an end one day quite suddenly – along with the deep silence that surrounded the fragile-looking being’s currently chosen abode, a dark room with a single trickle of light to illuminate the surroundings. He would have felt irritated, had he the capacity to do so. A shrill shout, like a squall of an un-tuned violin played by the hands of someone thoroughly unprofessional, followed by a percussive thump paired with a cracking sound which was, for some strange reason, unique enough to be music to his ears. Then the silence returned. He settled into his bed of grass, the arrangement which he seemed to haul with him everywhere he ventured and closed his eyes. Sleep was beyond his grasp, but over time he’d developed a wonderful ability to leave the world in his own way, a mode of switching off his brain and consciousness that he had not claimed when still a living being.

Shortly, however, the silence was broken once more, this time by something softer than the previous sound. Soft mewling complaints that echoed far back in his consciousness, bringing forth memories so vibrant that at first he thought he might actually feel a hint of something in his small, alien body, a glimmer, though not a pleasant one. He lifted one delicate, petal-thin eyelid, exposing a hollow seemingly devoid of life beneath, and shifted in the direction of the pained sounds.

Slowly, a memory returned to him, back from the before times when he’d been normal, more or less. A mewling creature that had changed his life forever had rested on a bed of golden flowers – the irony of it had not escaped him even now in his callousness and semi-insanity. Or was it full insanity? Truth be told, he hadn’t cared enough to ask himself in years. In any case, this certainly was an interesting break from the monotony that had come to be his existence, and so he turned towards the sound.

It passed through the door limping, and he could practically smell the salt of the tears pouring down the thing’s face. A human child. Now that was something he had not seen in a long while. Perhaps he should be glad that he could no longer feel, for he didn’t know if he’d be relieved at the presence of a successor to the previous child or perhaps be enraged. As it was, he was simply observant and still, analytical dark eyes watching the forward progress of the determined human. He’d forgotten how they looked when they moved, graceless and bumbling with forms much heavier than those born to the underground. It stumbled once more and lay in a heap on the dark floor, feet away from the light in which he’d chosen to bask so often. He thought to speak, simply to nudge the thing onwards, but before he could he heard the approach of footsteps – familiar ones, despite the years. Not wishing to be seen, he tucked in his petals and leaves and dove into the soft earth beneath the scarce sunshine like a worm hiding from a bird, though it was not an action motivated by fear.

Heavy, padded and yet somehow comforting footfalls resounded across the ground above his head, followed by a muffled gasp that could only come from one being. Flowey closed his eyes in his grave-like hiding place. Regardless of how empty he was, the tones of this voice always made him feel a momentary ambiguous spark, half made of love and sadness, the other of anger and the will to punish, both devastating in equal amounts. It was times like these that he remembered his name, and had brief flashes of memories that had been. He willed her to go away so that he may return to his unfeeling ways, and in time, she did, presumably with the human child with her, for when he returned his form to the sunlight the damaged, fleshy body was gone.

He could have left this issue to be resolved without his interference, of course. However, in a world of boredom, anything out of the ordinary demanded his attention. The first time, he simply planted himself at a distance and watched the child and the large white motherly figure interact. Picnics, birthday celebrations, new toys, everything that he himself could recall from his not-so-human childhood. These observations rarely drove him mad, though the detestable sparks of emotion grew stronger with each visit. He finally put an end to his unknown comings and goings and returned to waiting in his patch of sunlight, for everything and for nothing, only occasionally leaving the place to sate his curiosity and boredom with the lives of others in various manners.

It was during one of these outings that his boycott on observing the human child ended rather unintentionally. Flowey had taken it upon himself to go to Waterfall, a place in whence breaking news was rather rare. The locals had their charms however. Aaron never ceased to amuse with his blatant disregard for the comfort of others, while Shyren seemed to constantly make up new songs which she’d sing for no one, but which Flowey could hear her hum to himself from his hidden perch. He was merely watching the course of the water blankly when he heard the approaching patter of footsteps, though they came in an odd rhythm. He turned. The human was coming in his direction, prancing on pointed toes that were crammed inside of pink slippers which laced up their calves to their knees, slightly too big so that they kept slipping down slightly, the laces trailing the ground behind them on one side.

Flowey ducked into a nearby crevice, not wishing to be seen by the incoming clumsy thing, but preferring to watch the progress now that the larger one was not accompanying the new addition to the underground. It seems the child had made it out of the Ruins somehow, a place which he knew that the old goat would never leave. He was curious as to what he’d missed, he supposed, but only a bit. The child continued onwards, skipping and prancing what it must have thought to be a fine dance along the rickety makeshift bridges that defined Waterfall. Despite his efforts to hide, when the child reached him, a glint of light from one of the phosphorescent stones marking the ceiling of his entire world ran across one of his golden petals and betrayed him. The child immediately ceased their prancing and turned towards him.

The face caused him to recoil. There was no similarity between this child and the last; it had longer lashes, darker skin, lighter hair, and eyes that shone green in the light. There is simply an innate similarity in all human children that struck him now as suffocating. Despite his probably grim expression, a betrayal of the rare flash of feeling that sudden visuals brought forth, the child beamed and took a step towards him – or attempted to, at the very least. As it raised a foot, it quickly realized that the lace connected to the protective slipper had become lodged under the opposite. After a moment of wobbling, the child lost the battle with gravity. 

Had it fallen forward, things might have been fine. The future might have gone differently. As it was, however, the child toppled backwards, down into the abysses to which the dozens of waterfalls flowed, accompanied by a scream much like the one Flowey had heard on the day of its arrival in his world. It did not end in a thud, though. The sound merely faded until it could be heard no more. Flowey had reflexively shot out a series of small, thorn-coated vines in an attempt to help, but it’d been too late. He watched with neither horror nor disgust as the thing plunged over the edge and into the unfathomable blackness below, never to return to even the mediocre light of the known Underground. It would eventually, he knew, hit rock bottom and expel its soul, which some monster might find floating about one day. As for himself, he’d had enough of human souls. He withdrew into the earth.

And thus the first human to visit the underground in perhaps a century was gone without a trace.


	2. Soul Two

Time passed, and days turned into weeks, which became months which became years, and ultimately, this first soul was by and large forgotten. Of the few monsters it had interacted with, only Flowey and the great white mother figure remembered enough to mourn the loss of this spark of life, and only one of them was capable of doing so. Once upon a time, before feeling had faded so drastically, Flowey might have mustered enough compassion (or a perfect mirror thereof) and tried to comfort the woman. However, it was too late for that. Now he simply basked in the sun, letting the years pass, letting his mind wander in those unknowable and unreachable caverns most beings had no need to explore.

Word had it that the king had somehow obtained the soul, a rich blue and luminescent thing that he’d once gone out of his way to view briefly. It’d been stored in a jar, on display in the throne room for the hungry, desperate eyes of monsters who trekked from all across the Underground to view the spectacle. There were murmurs of hope – maybe someday they actually could get out. They could see the sun rather than just a thin dappling of warmth through holes in the ceiling of their world that marked the end of the first world, the true world. Maybe they could be free, after all these years. Flowey often thought of this in his seeming eons of deep, undisturbed silence, though he never felt particularly inclined to hope along with them. He had no reason to believe that breaking through to the surface would change his situation.

It was during one of these ponderings that his silence was once more shattered by a sound that was slowly becoming familiar to him. That same mewling, an identical thud. Flowey tilted his gold-maned head (so much like his father’s, in its own way, even now) and peered towards the noise. He had no need to ask himself what’d caused the disruption this time, for that curiosity had been sated long ago. 

The silence resumed for a long while – in the darkness, it was difficult to ascertain whether it’d been minutes, hours or even days. Flowey considered moving, thought to himself that perhaps he should check on this fallen human to see if they were okay. However, he knew this thought was illogical. More than likely, the thing had died from the fall, as the last should have done before managing to fall elsewhere. With no worry or tenderness to drive him to the action, he stayed in place, still listening for signs of life subconsciously. 

Finally, he could hear movement approaching the archway which led to his own cavern, his personal quarters since the death of the last. He did not hide this time, for the sound of the larger yet somehow lighter footprints – those belonging to her – didn’t encroach on the scene. He looked, wide-eyed and somewhat dazed at the presence of movement, at the human which stumbled its way through the doorway. It was pale and squishy, thicker and rounder than the previous models of humans he’d encountered. The hair was short and yellow, cropped to its ears rather than the long, shaggy versions the others had worn, and the eyes set into the pudgy face were the color of chocolate. Its clothes were inconsequential – a shirt with short sleeves and pants that were, Flowey noticed, stained with blood. The hands, dirty-nailed and raw-looking, clutched a map between them as if it were a rope to safety.

The flower had no sympathy for the frightened figure. However, as it approached him, the still, breathing floral figure centered in the single shaft of light this area offered made no move to distance himself. He did, however, feel slightly confused as the damaged child broke into a gap-toothed smile and sat down beside him, whimpering as the motion caused the unseen wound on its leg to undoubtedly pulse with pain. This close, Flowey could smell the metallic tang of the blood, the must that followed humans around in their wake without their ever knowing, and the smell of what he imagined to be the above-world – cool, crisp, alive. 

“Hello,” rasped a small voice, once more pulling hum away from his thoughts. It was a strange thing, being spoken to. Not since his early years as a flower had he been addressed, and then in mostly wails of sorrow or apologies which had failed to fully reach him, from pitiful creatures who were better off without the knowledge of what he’d become. His bewilderment in the moment must have shown, for the child continued, “I won’t hurt you. I-I don’t know where I am.” The thoughts seemed unconnected, though Flowey supposed this was simply the nature of children, especially wounded ones in shocking situations such as these.

Flowey pondered for a moment longer before deigning to reply. “The Underground,” was all he mumbled in reply at first, leaves drooping as he heard his own voice, the unused whisper that it’d become after years of silence. “Where the monsters live,” he elaborated after a moment of processing that the sound was, indeed, coming from his own mouth. 

“M-Monsters?!” the child sputtered, and made to get to its feet, possibly to run back in the direction from which it had come. It was no use. They merely uttered a hiss of pain and returned to sitting on the cool earth once more. The panic faded from its features slowly as it gazed at the flower, which was rather intrigued by this point to say the least. Finally, they spoke again, a little more serene than before. “You’re a monster.” A statement, not a question.

“Yes.”

“Then…” The child’s features scrunched for a moment, an expression of concentration overtaking the round cheeks and button nose. “Then monsters can’t be bad. You’re just a flower.” Bright tones. Relief. 

Flowey didn’t know if, under other circumstances, he should feel amused or offended. Instead of dignifying this observation with a response, he raised one of his thorny green vines, shaking the silt from it absentmindedly as it emerged from the earth, and indicated the sticky blood covering a rather large area of the child’s leg. “You hurt yourself,” he posited. “Clean it or you’ll get an infection.” Informational, off-topic, true to his new self. 

Of course, the human had no idea how to clean a wound properly, nor where to get the supplies to do so in this strange subterranean world. Flowey reluctantly used his vines to help the child to their feet and directed them to Toriel’s home, where he knew they would get the help they required. While he felt no fondness for the human, the brief trade of words had been a welcome relief from the emptiness, and he supposed there were better uses for this pudgy soul than to let it die in front of him and stink up where he lived.

Before the child left, Flowey turned to it, and in a serious note and said, “Do not tell Toriel you got directions from me, or that you’ve seen me at all. It would not be good. Okay?” For who, exactly, this wouldn’t be good, he did not say. He didn’t need to. The child nodded their comprehension, embraced the flower as best they could in thanks (another strange development in the flower’s world), and went onwards, still clenching the map they’d fallen down with.

Flowey once more decided to watch the child from a distance. They found the home, the mother-monster and the help they needed. Every so often, they would come back to search for Flowey, and sometimes the flower would let himself be found, and enjoy the break in monotony that this human provided. Much of the conversation involved Toriel, and stung the flower in a way that he did not entirely dislike, for at least there was a spark within the void during these times. While Flowey would not have considered himself and the child in question friends, the human was certainly always welcome to come about. Sometimes they brought him treats – slices of pie, snail dishes – that spoke of both happier times and bitter memories. Near the end, the child claimed they’d made the baked goods themselves, though the flower was certain they’d received help; the flavors were simply too familiar. When he voiced this doubt, the child had brought their apron and a small pan, as if to prove to him that they could indeed cook alone. However, with the distinct lack of fire in Fowey’s domain and the flower’s unwillingness to travel to the child’s new home, proof had been impossible to obtain. Other times, they played games, Flowey using his vines as a swing for the human, or shaking hem free of the earth to create pictures on the wall of the dark cavern.

As the years passed, the human grew before Fowey’s eyes. The limbs extended, the pudginess flattened and the face took on a new shape. As the physical form changed, so did the heart of the child. Visits became less and less frequent, and when they did happen, the child no longer laughed nor hardly smiled. While Flowey was now unfamiliar with these feelings and could not sympathize with the depression manifesting itself before his eyes, he did not like this change. It was much harder for the human to amuse him in this state, it seemed. On their final visit, they informed Flowey that they would try to leave. Flowey was not entirely pleased, but felt no distress or drive to prevent them from going. 

After leaving the ruins, the child made it as far as Holland. They took much longer than it would have for a monster who knew the Underground and its strange passages and puzzles, but the human had no such assistance. That is, aside from Flowey’s occasional help when he paused to visit the journeying human. The human lingered in Snowdin and became sick. They were lost in Waterfall and nearly drowned on more than one occasion, while the locals, confused at the strange appearance of such an unknown creature (which they more than likely believed to be another monster), looked on and did nothing to help. By the time they reached Hotland, all the will to press onward that they’d had before had left the human for good. 

It was hot, hard to breathe, and harder to move. Flowey watched from afar in his usual calculating way. He didn’t spend a great deal of time here. It wilted him, and he disliked the physical feeling of it. However, he’d sensed that the human was at the end of its rope during their last short-lived conversation and he wanted to see what happened. 

The last visit was one-sided. Flowey did not make himself known. The human sat down, feet dangling over the side of one of the raised cliffs which loomed over the steaming, boiling lava lakes below. It took off its apron, stained in equal amounts by both blood and food from its various adventures, folded it neatly, and set it aside. It crowned the small pile with its frying pan, which they’d informed Flowey they’d brought in case they needed to cook their own food on the journey, something Flowey told them was an exceedingly stupid idea since there were shops everywhere along the way. Relieved of these burdens, the child gave a lurch forward and disappeared over the edge of the cliff. 

Flowey didn’t hear the sound as the body of what’d been the closest thing to a friend he could have in his state of being hit the tide of molten materials below, but noted the faint green shimmer of the soul as it departed its physical prison, perchance to be collected by a monster that, unlike the human in question, still had hope.


End file.
